Sudip Gautam: From £10 to £10million in less than 10 years

Sudip Gautam or Dario Lopez as he is now known is a Nepali migrant who moved to London with his mother in November 2002.

9 years later he has been announced as Britain’s biggest seller on eBay. The youngster started his business as a 13 year old, when he borrowed his mum’s card to buy a domain namefor £10. He didn’t tell his mum he was buying a domain otherwise she wouldn’t have let him.

It turned out to be the first step in building his online retail empire.

At the time sim cards were selling in shops at a cost of £10 each, but he found a supplier who would supply them wholesale at a cost of 50p each. He started his eBay shop in 2004 expanding his range of consumer electronics and mobile goods each year growing rapidly especially in 2009, 5 years after starting his business Dario was sleeping in office working from 6 in the morning till 1 in the morning.

By this time he was earning over £3million in revenue a year. Coming 2nd and 3rd in the biggest sellers list for the last two years Dario has finally captured the number 1 spot, becoming Britain’s biggest seller on eBay with over 600,000 sales in the last 5 years. Still only 21 years old the young entrepreneur is selling over 2,000 items a day on eBay and also has a store in London called the London Magic Store, which sells mobile accessories by the way, not magic stuff.

Dario has worked extremely hard to ensure that his high levels of customer service are met by his 13 staff.

“We worked extremely hard on our feedback score by replying to queries, issues and complaints as quickly and efficiently as we could and ensuring customers received their orders as soon as possible.”

The entrepreneur also explains how there is no chance that he could have started a similar venture back home in Nepal.

“Over there you need a lot of money to set up a business. The postal system is not reliable and not many Nepalis use computers. Furthermore it’s difficult to import."

And like a true entrepreneur he is already thinking about his next venture, although he gives very little away, 'a social networking site, different from Facebook or Twitter.'

Rishi Chowdhury

Co founder of YHP, founder of IncuBus Ventures, online marketing consultant & host of one of London's top entrepreneurial events (Flagons Den). Regularly found networking around Tech City, convincing myself I'm working.
Working for the future, living for the moment.